Indian Fairy Tales
Narrated by Elizabeth Grace
Indian Fairy Tales holds classic folk stories from India, collected by the English folklorist Joseph Jacobs and first published in 1892.
Jacobs drew these tales from a much older Indian oral tradition, the same stories told to children for generations before he set them into print. It stands alongside his companion books English Fairy Tales and Celtic Fairy Tales, part of the same project to bring folklore from across the world into one shelf of bedtime reading. The collection opens with "The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal," where a clever jackal has to outwit a tiger freed from its cage by a kindhearted but careless man. Elsewhere a poor Brahman dreams his way into riches in "The Broken Pot," and a prince goes looking for a demon's hidden life in "Punchkin," a tale of a captive queen and a foe who cannot be beaten by ordinary means.
These are trickster tales and beast fables in the spirit of Aesop, full of talking animals, clever underdogs, and small people who best the powerful through wit rather than strength. Anyone who keeps the Brothers Grimm or the Arabian Nights close at hand will enjoy this wider taste of world folklore beyond the usual European stories — the settings shift to raja's courts and village roads, but the shape of the stories will feel familiar.
Elizabeth Grace gives each short tale its own slow, even rhythm. Don't bother tracking the twists; you'll be gone before the jackal outwits the tiger or the demon's secret comes out.
